🇹🇭Thailand · Property
Thailand — Property
What a foreigner can legally own in Thailand in 2026: the 49% condo quota, 30-year leases, why nominee companies are illegal, and 2.5–5.3% transfer costs.
Thai law will sell a foreigner the flat and not the ground under it. Around that split sit a 49 % quota measured in floor area, a lease the Supreme Court refused to stretch past its first term, and a transfer-fee cut written for Thai nationals only. So what can you actually buy, and what does holding it cost?
Buying property in Thailand: the flat can be yours, the ground cannot
Foreigners took ownership of 6,533 condominium units across Thailand between January and June 2026, worth THB 28,267,000,000. That is 11.7 % of all condo transfers counted in doors and 21.7 % counted in money. About one unit in nine, and more than a fifth of the value.
The average foreign purchase came in at THB 4,300,000. Read that as a national mix rather than a market price: the release carries no province split, so one figure blends a small unit in Chonburi with a river view in Bangkok. Chinese buyers took 1,813 units, Russian buyers 842, the latter up 50.4 % in a year and the fastest-growing of the top three.
Transfer counts, values and nationality splits: REIC (Real Estate Information Center, Government Housing Bank), press release of 11 September 2026, compiled from Department of Lands registrations. Official data, read through a state compiler rather than the register itself.
None of those units came with a plot. A foreigner can hold a condominium outright and cannot be entered as owner of the land beneath a house, and almost every Thai property question a newcomer asks descends from that one line. Four of them decide a purchase, in this order: what you may own, which workaround is a crime, what the transfer costs, and what the annual bill looks like afterwards.
Condo freehold: the 49% quota and the money that has to arrive from abroad
The is 49 % of the total floor area of all units in a building, shared by every foreign owner in it and fixed at the building’s registration. Area, not unit count. A block whose largest units went to foreigners can be shut to you while smaller doors stand empty.
Section 19 bis of the Condominium Act, where that rule sits, is read here on the Department of Lands’ own copy of the Act. A Thai embassy page still prints the pre-2008 figure and is not cited for the quota. The Act’s money rules below come from a law firm’s English translation (Thailand Law Online), because they were not checked against that copy.
The quota is tested when the transfer is registered, not when a deposit is signed. In practice buyers ask the building’s juristic person for the current quota position in writing before money moves, because a deposit paid into a full building becomes a dispute with the seller rather than an administrative fix.
The money has to arrive from abroad. On that translation, a buyer in the Act’s fifth category pays with foreign currency brought into Thailand, or from a non-resident baht or foreign-currency account, and shows the Land Office bank evidence covering at least the unit price: the , or an equivalent certificate.
Two different dollar thresholds for that evidence circulate online; neither survived a check against a current official page, so this chapter gives none. A separate Bank of Thailand rule carries a verified number and is not a condo rule: at $ 200,000 or more, a bank asks for supporting documents on a foreign-exchange transaction.
A Thai spouse buying alongside a foreigner is assessed through the foreigner. Under a 1994 Department of Lands letter, quoted on a Thai embassy page stale on other points, the whole unit counts as foreign-held unless the Thai spouse proves the money is personal property. The Department’s current page on that question is among the blocked ones.
Ownership can also end by rule. Section 19 quinque lists when a foreign owner must sell: inheriting a unit that breaks the quota, losing residence permission, deportation. No deadline was legible on any page reached. Land is stricter still.
Land and houses: the 30-year lease and the court case that broke “30+30+30”
There is no ordinary route to owning Thai land. Land Code s.86 lets a foreigner acquire it only under a treaty granting that right, and the practitioner source used here states that none is in force. The Code comes through a law firm’s translation; the treaty claim is a lawyer’s, not a statute’s.
What is left is the lease. On Thailand Law Online’s translation, the for immovable property is 30 years under Civil and Commercial Code s.540, and anything longer is cut back to it. A lease of more than 3 years is enforceable only for that long unless it is written and registered at the Land Office. The registration fee is not quoted here: that schedule sits behind the same block.
Then the part the brochures skip. In judgment 4655/2566 the Supreme Court examined a 1990 Phuket land-and-house lease sold as a first term plus two pre-paid renewals on the original conditions, and held the renewal promises a circumvention of s.540. They were void, the lessee was evicted, and damages of THB 30,000 a month ran against him. The case was decided in 2023 and publicised in early 2025 through one law firm’s briefing.
The Court did not ban renewal. It accepted that a lease can be renewed once the first term expires; what it refused to enforce was a renewal frozen in advance on first-term conditions. A “30+30+30” package is therefore not ninety years of anything. It is one registered term, plus two promises a court has already declined to honour.
One statutory exception exists and very few buyers meet it. Under Land Code s.96 bis, in Thailand Law Online’s translation, a foreigner who brings in more than THB 40,000,000 of investment may, with the Minister of the Interior’s approval, acquire up to one rai (1,600 m²) for a residence in Bangkok, Pattaya City, a municipality or a town-planning residential zone. How long that investment must be held is disputed, so no figure appears here. Inheritance under s.93 is named on the Department’s sitemap; its conditions sit on a page that would not open.
Land Code ss.86, 93, 96 bis and Civil and Commercial Code ss.538, 540: Thailand Law Online English translations. Judgment 4655/2566: Addleshaw Goddard briefing, 10 March 2025. Official texts on krisdika.go.th, ratchakitcha.soc.go.th and dol.go.th were unreachable from this network.
Title matters as much as structure. Only a is a full ownership deed; and Nor Sor 3 are certificates of use, on which sales, leases and mortgages can still be registered, while a Sor Kor 1 is no more than notice of possession. Those abbreviations come from a lawyer-authored site, not the Department of Lands. The shortcut sold to buyers who want land anyway is a Thai company, and that is where the criminal law begins.
The Thai-company workaround is a crime, and 2026 moved the check to registration
The structure is familiar to anyone who has viewed a villa. A Thai limited company owns the land, the foreign buyer takes a minority stake plus the directorship, and Thai shareholders who never paid for their shares hold the rest. That last clause is the offence.
The Foreign Business Act reaches the Thai side first. Section 36 puts a Thai national or non-foreign juristic person who helps a foreigner operate through a nominee arrangement in reach of up to 3 years in prison, a fine of THB 100,000 to THB 1,000,000, or both. That text is not a translation: it is printed in Thai on the Department of Business Development’s own 2026 registration form.
The Land Code adds penalties of its own. On Thailand Law Online’s translation, s.113 catches anyone acquiring land as agent for a foreigner with a fine of up to THB 20,000, imprisonment of up to 2 years, or both, while ss.94 and 96 let the Director-General set a disposal period of not less than 180 days and not more than 1 year, then sell the land himself. Condominium Act s.67, read on the Department of Lands’ copy, mirrors it for units: up to 2 years or a fine of up to THB 20,000.
In 2026 the check moved from the raid to the registration desk. Registrar Order 2/2569 has applied since August 2026: where a foreigner holds under half the capital or sits as an authorised director, registration now calls for bank statements showing where each Thai shareholder’s money came from, generally the three months before subscription, statements showing it arrived, and an investment explanation letter. That comes from one law firm’s update, since the Department’s own site served no order text. It replaced Order 2/2568, whose start a vendor selling an alternative structure dates to January 2026.
The enforcement record is thin. Authorities announced renewed action against nominee arrangements during 2026, and practitioners report registrations taking longer as statements and letters become routine. No primary count of companies or prosecutions was reached, so none is printed. Doing it legally costs a measurable amount at the counter.
What the transfer costs: 2.5% or 5.3%, and the contract decides who pays
Three charges land at the Land Office on the day of transfer, and one comes in two mutually exclusive versions. The transfer fee is 2 % of the official appraised value. Then either at 3.3 %, the base rate plus a local surcharge of a tenth of the tax itself, or stamp duty at 0.5 %. Never both, and each is charged on the higher of price or appraised value.
A calendar decides which branch you are on. An individual who sells within 5 years of acquiring pays SBT, unless their name has stood in that property’s for at least 1 year. So the stack is 2.5 % of value where stamp duty applies and 5.3 % where SBT does. Both are shares of appraised value or the higher of the two figures, which is why a tidy percentage quoted against a listing price rarely survives the appraisal.
The seller’s income tax is withheld on the spot and sits outside those totals. For an individual, Thai or foreign alike, tax is computed on the appraised value after a standard deduction, divided by the years held, run through the progressive scale and multiplied back out; the year count stops at 10 years, and where the seller elects separate taxation the result is capped at 20 % of that appraised value. A company, a developer included, has 1 % withheld. The deduction table was not readable, so no percentage for it appears here.
Who pays which line is contract, not law. SBT, stamp duty and the withholding are the seller’s liabilities; the transfer fee is allocated by agreement. In practice the split is fixed in the sale agreement before any deposit, because arguing at the counter changes nothing about whom the Land Office collects from.
Then the relief that is not for you. The Cabinet cut the transfer fee, and mortgage registration with it, to 0.01 % in June 2026, for homes whose sale price and appraised value each stay at or under THB 7,000,000, running until June 2027. It applies where the buyer is an individual of Thai nationality. A foreign buyer of the same unit at the same desk pays 2 %. The measure has been rolled forward year by year, so the expiry is the part to re-check.
- Transfer feeof the official appraised value
- 2 %verif. · 2026-09-15
- Specific Business Tax3% plus 10% local surcharge; seller held under 5 years and not house-registered for 1 year
- 3.3 %verif. · 2026-09-15
- Stamp dutyonly when SBT is not due; on the higher of price or appraised value
- 0.5 %verif. · 2026-09-15
- Seller withholding, individualaveraged over up to 10 years held; ceiling as a share of the appraised value
- 20 %verif. · 2026-09-15
- Seller withholding, companyof the higher of price or appraised value
- 1 %verif. · 2026-09-15
- Fee relief, Thai-national buyers onlyhomes up to THB 7 million, until 30 June 2027; foreigners pay 2%
- 0.01 %verif. · 2026-09-15
- Total on transfer, no SBTfee plus stamp duty, before withholding
- 2.5 %verif. · 2026-09-15
- Total on transfer, SBT duefee plus SBT, before withholding
- 5.3 %verif. · 2026-09-15
Sales of real estate sit outside VAT, which is why SBT or stamp duty carries the transaction instead. Mortgages do exist for foreigners, generally for work-permit holders with Thai income, permanent residents, or with a Thai spouse as main borrower, but no lender page with terms was reachable, so no rate, loan-to-value or income floor is printed. Most foreign purchases settle in cash.
Holding costs: the Land and Building Tax and an exemption foreigners cannot count on
For a home, the is small. A condo that is not an owner-occupied, house-registered residence falls into “other residential”: 0.02 % on the lowest band, rising to 0.1 % at the top. The much steeper bands quoted in general guides belong to commercial use and vacant land, not to flats.
Run the lowest band against REIC’s average foreign unit of THB 4,300,000 and the annual charge lands in the high hundreds of baht. That is arithmetic rather than a bill: the tax is charged on the official appraised value, not on what a buyer paid.
The exemption is where a foreign owner should stop assuming. An individual owner named in the house registration on 1 January pays nothing on the first THB 50,000,000 of tax base, or the first THB 10,000,000 where they own the building and not the land, the ordinary shape of a house on a leased plot. Whether a foreigner listed in a yellow house book satisfies that test is answered by nothing this chapter could reach. Treat it as open, and put it to your local administration before budgeting on it.
The calendar is fixed: assessments go out in February, payment falls due by the end of April. For 2026 no general reduction had been decreed as of early that year, on one law firm’s mid-January reading, and the Gazette could not be checked since. There is no separate capital gains tax on the way out; the withholding and SBT rules above do that work, so anyone who might resell inside 5 years should carry 3.3 % in the plan from the start.
No visa comes with the keys, and price data stops at Bangkok and Chonburi
A purchase buys no right to stay. Nothing in Thai immigration law converts a condominium into residence, and the product most often mistaken for one, , is a membership bought with a fee from THB 650,000 at the Bronze tier. Its published package list carries no property component of any kind.
Two routes count property, and count it as an asset rather than as a home. The Wealthy Global Citizen category asks for at least $ 500,000 invested in Thailand in the applicant’s own name, with property named among the permitted forms, held inside total assets of at least $ 1,000,000 ( announcement Por. 3/2568). The Wealthy Pensioner category, for applicants on the lower pension band, asks for $ 250,000 invested on the same list of forms. Everything else about staying is in the visa chapter. Land Code s.96 bis grants land, not residence.
Price data is thinner than the sales patter suggests. REIC’s index of new condos on sale in Bangkok and its vicinity rose 1.6 % in the year to the second quarter of 2026, and that index measures asking prices for new supply rather than a price per square metre. Chonburi, the province that contains Pattaya without being Pattaya, moved 0.5 % over the same year on a 2022 base, which is as close to flat as a property series gets.
Phuket is the hole in the map. No REIC series for the island appeared in the catalogue reached here, the listing portals refused access, and so this page quotes no Phuket price at all; any single figure shown for the island is one agency’s sample until proven otherwise. If the legal shape is settled and only the budget is open, the Thailand checklist sets out the paperwork in order, and the country overview puts the tax chapter alongside this one.
Frequently asked
Can foreigners buy property in Thailand?
Yes, in one form. A condominium unit can be held freehold, inside the 49 % share of a building’s total unit floor area open to foreign owners, and paid for with money transferred in from abroad. Land is closed. A house comes only through a registered lease of up to 30 years. The quota is read on the Department of Lands’ copy of the Condominium Act; the lease cap comes from Thailand Law Online’s translation of the Civil and Commercial Code, not an official text.
Can a foreigner own land in Thailand?
Not in their own name by any ordinary route. One statutory exception exists, Land Code s.96 bis in Thailand Law Online’s translation: more than THB 40,000,000 brought in as investment, approval from the Minister of the Interior, and no more than one rai, for a residence in a listed area. Few buyers qualify. Holding land through Thai shareholders who front for you is a criminal offence, exposing the Thai side to up to 3 years.
How does the 49% foreign quota work in a Thai condo?
Every foreign owner in a building shares it, and it is measured in floor area rather than in doors: at most 49 % of the combined floor area of all units, fixed at the building’s registration. A block can be shut to foreign buyers with units still unsold. Get the current quota position in writing before paying a deposit, and keep the bank evidence for the money brought in from abroad.
What are the transfer fees when buying a condo in Thailand?
The transfer fee is 2 % of the official appraised value. On top comes either stamp duty at 0.5 % or Specific Business Tax at 3.3 %, never both: 2.5 % or 5.3 % of value in total, before the seller’s income-tax withholding. The contract decides who pays which line. The 0.01 % fee cut running to June 2027 is for buyers who are Thai nationals.
Is a 30+30+30 year lease legal in Thailand?
On Thailand Law Online’s translation of the Civil and Commercial Code, a lease of immovable property is capped at 30 years, and one longer than 3 years must be registered at the Land Office to bind for its full term. In judgment 4655/2566 the Supreme Court treated pre-paid renewals on the original conditions as a circumvention of that cap and refused to enforce them. Renewal later remains possible. Only the first registered term is secure, so a package should be priced on that term alone.
Can I buy land in Thailand through a Thai company?
Not with nominee shareholders. The Thai party fronting for a foreign buyer faces up to 3 years and a fine of THB 100,000 to THB 1,000,000 under the Foreign Business Act, and land acquired that way can be ordered sold within a set period. Since August 2026, company registration has called for proof of each Thai shareholder’s source of funds, per law-firm reporting; the order text itself was not reachable.
Does buying property in Thailand give you a visa?
No: a purchase carries no right of residence. Thailand Privilege is a membership bought with a fee from THB 650,000, with no property element in its packages. Property counts in two LTR categories. Wealthy Global Citizen asks for at least $ 500,000 invested in Thailand, property among the permitted forms, inside total assets of at least $ 1,000,000; Wealthy Pensioner on the lower pension band asks for $ 250,000 invested, property again allowed. The visa chapter covers every other long-stay route.
Verified · 2026-09-15